A synopsis of the story

The unfortunate kingdom of Malaria has been
afflicted with perpetual storms and rain for years. King Malbert (voice of Jay
Leno) has combated with this adversity by making Malaria the centre for Evil
Scientists and their evil inventions. Their evil creations are used to
blackmail the rest of world, who pay large amounts of money to stop their
release.

Dr Glickenstein (John Cleese), one of
Malaria’s most famous but inept evil scientists, is working on his latest entry
for the Evil Science Fair, when he is accidentally killed. His oppressed but
clever assistant, Igor the hunchback (John Cusack) decides to use this
opportunity to live out his dream of being an evil scientist. With his friends,
Scamper the immortal rabbit (Steve Buscemi) and less than brainy Brain (Sean
Hayes), Igor creates a living evil monster, Eva (Molly Shannon). Unfortunately,
Eva’s ‘evil bone’ doesn’t work, and after a series of mishaps, she in fact thinks
she’s an actress.

Further troubles arise when Dr
Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard), a rival evil scientist, and his shape-shifting
girlfriend Jacqueline (Jennifer Coolidge) also plot to steal Igor’s invention
to win the competition and overthrow King Malbert. Igor, with the help of his
friends, must try to convince Eva to be ‘evil’ for the competition to realise
his dreams, survive threats to his life from the king and Dr Schadenfreude, and
expose the biggest cover up the kingdom has known.

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie
including:

After his invention fails, Dr Glickenstein
throws Igor across the room and yells ‘strike” when Igor hits some barrels.
Igor does not appear hurt.

Schadenfreude and Jacqueline have two
fights in the film, during which they use his “Igor” as a slapping board. The
hunchback is hit several times in the face and falls down, The scene is
depicted as humorous.

During a fight, Schadenfreude throws his
girlfriend across the table.

Glickenstein throws a transducer at Igor’s
head, causing him to fall down.

Glickenstein’s second invention is a rocket
ship. During its launch, the rocket explodes and Dr Glickenstein is killed.
While shocked, Igor and friends, don’t appear distressed.

When King Malbert visits Dr Glickenstein’s
castle, he picks Igor up by the feet, and bounces his head along the ground,
then drops him and steps on him.

King Malbert throws Igor down the ‘Igor
recycling’ shute. Scamper and Brain later jump in to help their friend. They
all end up winched up along a conveyer belt heading towards giant slicing
blades. They appear scared. Scamper rescues them, and he reveals he escaped by
chewing off his own hands. (No blood). The trio are then chased along darkened
tunnels by henchmen.

Suicidal Scamper keeps trying to kill
himself – he is shown to drop a heavy rock on himself, drink poison and blow
himself up. As he is immortal, he survives all efforts and does not appear
injured.

Jacqueline kicks the King into the Arena.
He looks up to see his weather tower falling down on him. He is crushed under
it and Schadenfreude proclaims him dead.

As Eva is created by Igor, Scamper is
struck by lightning and Brain has a large hand dropped on top of him. Both
recover quickly.

Scamper reads an exploding greeting card,
resulting in the centre of his head being blown out. He recovers and appears undistressed.

Igor gets angry with Brain for messing up
Eva’s brainwashing and chases him with an axe. Brain looks scared.

While singing a song, Eva spins about the
room, knocking down and destroying things. Igor, Scamper and Brain are all
knocked about as well. In another scene, Eva’s heavy footed dancing results in
Igor being launched off the floor and landing heavily in a box.

While making a costume for Eva, Brain
accidentally cuts off Scamper’s arm. Scamper does not even notice and continues
sewing with his other hand.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent
scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could
scare or disturb children under five, including the following:

When Dr Glickenstein launches his latest
invention, he yells at Igor and laughs in an evil way. There is scary music
playing in the background and lots of flashing lights and noise. The invention
goes wrong, with alarms going off.

Malaria and the evil scientists’ homes are
depicted as dark, depressing places. Scary music is played in the background.

King Malbert threatens Igor with
dismemberment, saying he will throw Igor down the manhole and then use his
hunch as a speedbump. He then leaves, with a plan to ‘kick some old people’.

When Igor reveals his ‘evil monster’
invention, Scamper and Brain appear horrifed. Scary music is played in the
background. Igor uses lots of spare body parts to build Eva. When Eva comes to
life, Igor repeatedly yells “Rise”. Again, there is a lot of noise, alarms,
flashing lights and smoke. When Eva then disappears, Igor, Brain and Scamper
appear scared. It appears that Eva enters a home for blind orphans and their
screams suggest she is killing them. When Igor enters the home, he sees she is
entertaining them instead.

Eva is taken to a brain-washing facility to
make her more evil. She placed in a room with her eyes held open by prongs and
she is made to watch black and white footage of people screaming.

Schadenfreude chases Igor and friends in
carriage, in attempt to steal Eva. He shoots their carriage with a ‘shrink’
gun, but misses each time. While concerned, Igor and friends are not shown to
be particularly scared. As the chase moves up onto a mountain, there are several
near cliff falls, skids and leaps between mountains. Igor’s carriage goes over
the edge, but with the help of Eva, he and his friends are pulled to safety.

Schadenfreude accidentally shrinks himself
and Jacqueline.

Heidi/Jacqueline gives Igor a card, which
when opened transports him directly into Schadenfreude’s castle. Schadenfreude
then tries to lure Igor into his plans to overthrow King Malbert. When Igor
refuses, he is then attacked. Igor escapes and Schadenfreude and his ‘igor’
assistant are trapped in the closing spa.

During his attempt to make over Eva,
Scamper yells out “Bring me the severed head of a supermodel!”

After being taunted by Schadenfreude, Eva’s
‘evil bone’ activates and she is transformed into the evil monster version of
herself. Her eyes become darkened and green and she looks angry. She then
enters the Science Fair arena and fights all the other inventions (dragons,
monster robot pandas etc), destroying them.

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

Some children in this age group may also
find some of the above mentioned scenes disturbing

Use of substances

Coarse language

In a nutshell

Igor is a light-hearted animated comedy
about good and evil. Young children may find some scenes scary and the themes
and aspects of the dialogue complex. Older children will enjoy the amusing
‘big’ characters and slapstick humour, and there is much for adults to enjoy in
the clever dialogue.

Values in this movie that parents may wish
to reinforce with their children include:

not being limited by other people’s
expectation of you.

striving and working hard towards your
dreams

friendship and loyalty

we all have potential to be evil, but can
choose not to be

This movie could also give parents the
opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life
consequences, such as